The new Viewer and Package for CD is not the only change made to
PowerPoint for the new version. Over the next
few months, we are going to take a quick look at
the changes:
- Better research tools
- New order to templates
- Font embedding changes
- Smart Tags
- Inking support
This article focuses in on the research tools and the template changes. I'll cover the other changes in future articles.
Better research tools
With PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft has added two
tools that will make content development a
little easier: the research pane and the
thesaurus.
The Research pane
All of the Office System 2003 products
have "improved" access to research tools. For
PowerPoint, this means that with a few quick
clicks, you can access a wide variety of
resources for content expansion, verification
and targeting. The resources available are
limited, but growing.
The research tools are accessed via the
research pane. If another pane is already
showing, click the dropdown arrow in the
title of the pane and select "Research". If no
pane is showing, you can bring the research pane
up by either alt-clicking on a word
on your slide or by using the Tools >
Research menu item.
As you can see in the picture, the resources
available are pretty basic. You have a
dictionary, some thesauruses, several
research sites, and some business and financial
information sites. Expect this list to grow
as Office 2003 grows into the market place.
(By the way, if you click "Research options"
at the bottom of the pane, you will find
other resources. Most of them are international
versions of the default resources.)
To do a search, type the words into the
search box, select the items you want to search
from the drop down, and off goes the search. For
general research, you may or may not find what
you are looking for.
The reason this tool is worth using….
One of my frustrations with
PowerPoint for years is the lack of a thesaurus.
Words may not be the only thing in a
PowerPoint presentation, but they are a major
part of most presentations. I have
long been frustrated by the lack of a thesaurus
in PowerPoint. Now, we have one. Unfortunately,
it isn't totally intuitive, but it is
there.
- The intended way to access the
thesaurus is by selecting the word
you want to change and bringing up the
thesaurus. Either a Shift-F7 or the
Tools => Thesaurus menu will bring up
the Research pane, with the thesaurus
pre-selected.
- If you already have the Research
pane visible, you can just type in
your word and select the appropriate
thesaurus from the drop down list.
- Once you get your list of
results, you can insert one of those
results into your presentation with a
right click of the new word. If your
original word is still selected, it
will be replaced by the new word. If
nothing is selected, the new word will be
inserted at the cursor position.
Another useful research resource…
Do you do slides with new words? You can use
the dictionary resources to add the definintion
of the word to your presentation by looking
the word up, selecting the definition you are
looking for, and copying and pasting the
definition onto your slide.
Work with many languages? Translate!
The third piece of the research I find most
useful is the ability to translate individual
words or full sentences at a mouse click. Select
translation from the search list, select the
original language and the new language and the
translation appears.
The translation is split into two pieces:
The bilingual dictionary for individual words and
WorldLingo machine translation for
sentences.
Template changes
Another of the big changes in PowerPoint
2003 is a change to how PowerPoint shows the
templates when you list the available designs
and how you access the templates for a new
presentation.
Display order
Instead of being listed in alphabetical
order, the templates are now listed in a rather
unique order that you will either love or
hate. Templates are now listed basically in
color order. However, the first two templates
are not in this order. Confusing? Yeah, but
useful once you get used to it….
The first template listed is always the
blank template. This is the template on your
system which has the name "Default Design.pot".
In the past, this was the template that was
used for all new presentations. It still
is, until you change it. If you want to, you can
select a different template to be your
default..
If you have a template that you use
all the time, bring that template up in a
presentation and view the Slide Design pane.
Right click on your preferred template.
Notice that there is a new menu item: Use for
All New Presentations. Selecting this option
for a template moves it to the second spot in
your template list. It also tells PowerPoint
that when you open a new presentation, you want
it to use this template.
Next on the list of templates are the most
recently used, non-Microsoft templates.
These templates are listed in order of use.
Following these templates are the rest
of the templates loaded with PowerPoint. These
templates are grouped by color. The basic order
for these templates is blue backgrounds, green
backgrounds, orange backgrounds, red
backgrounds, black backgrounds, and white
backgrounds.
Accessing templates
Besides changing the order of templates,
PowerPoint 2003 now differentiates between
templates delivered with PowerPoint and those you
add to your system.
If you go to the "New Presentation" task pane,
you will see three sections:
- New
- Templates
- and Recently
used templates
If you use any of the first three elements on
the New list, you will be selecting from the
templates delivered with PowerPoint. If you want
to select from a template you have added
to your system, you need to click the On my
computer item under Templates.
Further, if you click Blank presentation after
having chosen a default template, you will not
get a blank presentation. You will
instead get a presentation whose
background and masters are set up as defined in
your chosen default template.
One thing to keep in mind…
Just because a template is shown in one
color doesn't mean you can't use it in another
color. Each of the Microsoft templates
still have various color schemes associated with
them. What you are really seeing in the
template list is the colors that Microsoft
believes will be used most often for that
template.
Confusing? Yes.
Useful? Yes.
While this change
seems to be very confusing to the new
PowerPoint 2003 user, it is actually quite
intuitive once you play around with the new
order and options. If you have a template you
use all the time, you can set up your default
and never change. If you need to find a template,
you look at the others of the same colors and
pick the one that you like best.
